New testament genealogies and the families of Mary and Joseph.

Abstract

This study explores the differences between the most recent parts of the genealogies of Jesus found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, differences that have puzzled scholars for over seventeen hundred years. These differences do not conform to the types of inconsistencies found in most traditional genealogies. They are more effectively explained as being the products of different genealogical sources. Looking at these recent lineage segments from a genealogical perspective reveals four independent sources: the list of names after Zerubbabel from Abiud to Matthan to Joseph in Matthew 1:13-16; the name of Joseph's grandfather in Matthew 1:15, 16; the name of Joseph's grandfather in Luke 3:23; and the long listing of names between Nathan and Zerubbabel and after Zerubbabel in Luke 3:24-31. These sources were incorrectly combined, with the name of Joseph's father Jacob placed with a list of Mary's ancestors (Matthew 1:13-15) and the name of Mary's father (Joseph son of Heli, probably Joseph ben Elim, a Sepphoris priest) placed with the oral list that includes her husband's ancestors (Luke 3:29-30). Much of the confusion in these most recent genealogical segments is the result of the fact that Mary's husband and her father were both named Joseph, which was the second most popular male Jewish name in Second Temple times. Naming patterns derived from studies of Second Temple names and use of ancient sources help to recreate the family of Joseph, Mary's husband.

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For over seventeen hundred years scholars have faced difficulties in reconciling the genealogies of Jesus found in the gospels of Matthew and Luke (Mussies: 39-42; Johnson: 140-44). Oral historians, who have long collected genealogies, are familiar with these difficulties. As one states: "Historians who collect genealogies in oral societies will usually find that there are many more versions than they might have preferred" (Henige 1982: 98). In oral societies, differing versions often perform different functions and purposes, each equally valid within its own context Wilson 1977: 46-54; Vansina: 101, 182.

Introduction--Presentation of the Problem

Linear genealogies, however, serve only to validate an individual's claim to power, status, rank, or inheritance through descent from an earlier ancestor (Wilson 1992: 931). Since both the Matthean (Matt 1:2-16) and Lukan (Luke 3:23-38) genealogies trace the descent of Jesus, or at least of Joseph, from King David, their different theological themes expressed by tracing Joseph's ancestry from Abraham in Matthew or from Adam in Luke do not really explain the extensive differences that occur in the more recent parts of the genealogies; nor do these differences conform to the usual inconsistencies found in most traditional genealogies, such as those in the Old Testament: founder figures are remembered consistently, followed by a middle area with very few names and/or many omissions--what some oral historians call a "floating gap" (Vansina: 23), while the most recent generations are usually well remembered (Wilson 1977: 33).

Both the Matthean and the Lukan genealogies trace Joseph's descent from King David through Zerubbabel, the post-exilic leader in Judea. While Matthew traces the line of David to Zerubbabel through the Judean king line (in reasonable agreement with Old Testament sources four kings are omitted), Luke puts Zerubbabel as the descendent of Nathan, a younger son of David. From Zerubbabel down to Matthat/Matthan, Joseph's grandfather, there is again complete disagreement. The number of generations in Matthew's list seems to have symbolic importance (Brown: 69-70), but the line from Zerubbabel to Joseph in Matthew has far too few generations (a phenomenon termed "telescoping" by oral historians-see Henige 1974: 373-75). The line from Zerubbabel to Joseph in Luke's genealogy has a realistic number of generations, but there are signs of repeated segments in the lineage. And finally, Joseph's father is called Jacob in Matthew but Heli (Eli) in Luke.

The Nature of Genealogical Sources

Genealogists have long been familiar with the difference between information about a person's parents and grandparents and information on earlier generations in a person's family (Jacobus, 1938; 1958: 82, 84, 85). Most people know the names of their grandparents, but not the names of great-grandparents and beyond. The names of one's parents and grandparents are usually a matter of personal experience and memory, while the names of earlier generations are almost always passed on to an individual second-hand. In literate societies, names of these earlier generations are often derived from written records, either personal or public. Thus, in both oral and literate societies, it is typical that the name of a person's father and grandfather or grandfathers comes from a different source than that which contains the names of earlier generations.

This is, I believe, the case in the two gospel genealogies for Jesus: the most recent segments of each genealogy from King David to Joseph show evidence of two separate and independent sources, with one source supplying the name of Joseph's father and another source providing the names the earlier generations, with a break or genealogical fault line in the lineage between Joseph's father and these earlier generations. The lack of agreement between the two gospel genealogies reflects both the independence of these four sources and their incorrect juxtaposition. These four sources are as follows: first, the list of names after Zerubbabel (from Abiud to Matthan to Joseph) found in Matthew 1:13-16; second, the name of Joseph's grandfather in Matthew 1:15, 16; third, the name of Joseph's grandfather in Luke 3:23; and fourth, an oral list, the long listing of names found between Nathan and Zerubbabel and after Zerubbabel-Rhesa-Joanan in Luke 3:24-31. Below, I will discuss each of these sources and then suggest how they came to be combined.

The Most Recent Lineage Segment in Matthew's Genealogy

Oral historians have learned to look at lineage segments rather than at genealogies as a whole (Vansina: 182-43. In the Matthean genealogy, before Joseph's father comes the lineage segment back to Zerubbabel, eight generations, from youngest to oldest: Matthan, Eleazar, Eliud, Achin, Zadok, Azor, Eliakin, Abiud. Since Zerubbabel lived some 500 years before Jesus, this is a severely truncated genealogy at best. Furthermore, Abiud does not appear in the Old Testament record of Zerubbabel's sons in 1 Chronicles 3:19-20. According to Johnson (180), these names, from Zerubbabel through Jacob, "are found in the late writings of the OT while three of the ten were used among the Jews in Egypt during NT times." Perhaps more intriguingly, some of the names appear to be of priestly origin. Eleazar is a common, but not exclusively, priestly name (Stern: 21, n. 119; but see Ilan 2002: 70, n. 3), while Zadok is the quintessential priestly name in the Old Testament--all individuals named Zadok in the Hebrew scriptures are priests cf. Sanders: 171. Abiud is a son of Aaron, the first high priest (Johnson: 179).

From early in church history there have been reports, often denied, that Mary was of Levitical stock. Hyppolytus, Origen, and Ephraem the Syrian ([dagger] 375 CE) knew of this tradition, although the latter two denied it (Brown et al.: 154, n. 345, 261), probably because of the church's emphasis on a Davidic messiah. Elizabeth, Mary's relative, was of a priestly family (Luke 1:5, 36) and, because intermarriage among priestly families in Second Temple times was common (Jeremias: 218; Johnson: 97), Mary quite plausibly belonged to a priestly family herself and this lineage is hers. Although the genealogies of women were commonly not kept in ancient Judaism, those of the priestly families, including women, were kept in the Temple in Jerusalem, as described by the first-century Jewish historian Josephus in his work AGAINST APION 1: 30-36 (see also Jeremias: 216, 283; Johnson: 99-101). If such tables were destroyed, as some may have been in the Macabbean wars of the second century BCE, efforts were made to recompile them from the surviving records (Jeremias: 214-15). The lineage segment from Abiud to Matthan in the Matthean genealogy appears to be one of these lists, especially with "A begat B," "B begat C" in formal Old Testament style. Since this list would have been kept in the Temple in Jerusalem before 70 CE, it was a public record that could have been copied by a member of the early Jerusalem church as "account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah" (Matthew 1:1). After the Temple's destruction, Jewish Christian refugees could have carried this list to Antioch, where it is thought that the Gospel of Matthew was composed (Meier: 15, 22-27).

If the third segment of the Matthean genealogy is indeed the lineage of Mary, then why, one asks, isn't she mentioned on this list, and how did it get to be associated with Joseph? I believe that there was a Mary on the original list, and that she was named on the list as the daughter of Joseph, but that the writer of Matthew, getting this written list without any detailed information about it, assumed that the woman named Mary at the end of this list was the daughter of Joseph, Jesus' stepfather (see Epiphanus' PANARIAN 78, 8 [F. Williams: 606] for the daughters of Joseph). This Mary, daughter of Joseph, mentioned in the apocryphal Gospel of Phillip v. 32 and sometimes thought to be the wife of Clopas and mother of James the Lesser and Joses, was known in the early church as a disciple of Jesus (Bauckham 1991: 248, n. 16; 265).

If my interpretation of the final part of the Matthean genealogy is correct, then both the father and the husband of Mary the mother of Jesus were named Joseph. (Blair [153] also came to this conclusion.) This is not a far-fetched idea. Joseph was one of the most frequent names among male Jews in the Palestine of late antiquity. Ilan's extensive compendium (2002: 56, table 7) found 231 Josephs, second only to Simon, with 257 individuals. In a smaller sample of Second Temple names Hachlili (113) found Joseph to be the third most-common male Jewish name. Blair (153, n. 1) noted that the purported name of Mary's father in the second century apocryphal Protogospel of James was Joachim, which means "May God set up," and that Joseph means "May God add," two quite similar meanings, which might have led to confusion as the name passed into the oral tradition (if oral history is carried down at least one generation, it becomes oral tradition).

Jewish Naming Patterns in Second Temple Times

Genealogists sometimes look for naming patterns in children as a clue to ancestral names. For example, Dutch colonial naming preferences were for naming the first son for the paternal grandfather and the first daughter for the maternal grandmother (see Vosburgh). Although there are not a great deal of data to go on for first-century BCE and CE Israel, inscriptions from Jewish ossuaries have revealed certain common naming patterns. Naming male children after an ancestor was prevalent, and naming a son after his paternal grandfather was the most common pattern. From the first century BCE onward, it was common to name a son after his father in prominent families and priestly families in Israel (Hachlili 1984: 9; 190, table 2; 2000: 88-89).

Only one Jewish family of this period has left an extensive family tree that reveals naming patterns in terms of both kinship connections and birth order, the family of King Herod the Great. Taking the exhaustive listing by K. C. Hanson 1989a: 78-81 (cf. Richardson, 1996: 46-51), a tabulation of these data for the male children (see table 1) shows that firstborn sons were predominantly (45%) named for either the father or the father's father (the paternal grandfather). Secondarily, the first son was named for the father's grandfather or another relative in the father's lineage. A similar pattern is found for another wealthy first century CE Jewish family, the Goliath family of Jericho (Hachlili & Smith: 68; Hachlili 1984: 193), where 64% of the sons were named for the father or the father's father (see table 2).

This is the same naming pattern described in Luke 1:59, where the name Zechariah after the father was originally proposed for the infant John the Baptist. However, when Elizabeth says that the baby is to be called John, the people remark to her that "none of your relatives has this name" (Luke 1:60). This remark not only reinforces the then-accepted idea that a firstborn son should be named after his father but also indicates that Elizabeth was a relative of her husband's through the male line. Marriage between close relatives was a common practice among families in first century Israel (Hanson 198%: 143).

This naming pattern is probably also found in the names of Jesus' brothers (Mark 6:3; Matt 13:55). James and Joses (or Joseph) are mentioned first in both gospel lists and, since there is a near-universal pattern of naming siblings in birth order, James (or Jacob, its Semitic form) was most likely the oldest, and thus was likely named for his father's father. The second son, Joseph, was named for his father. Jacob is the name of Joseph's father in Matthew's genealogy, and thus most likely was Joseph's father's name. This argument holds whether James was Joseph's oldest son by an earlier wife (the Epiphanian position) or by Mary (the Helvidian position).

In addition, Clopas, said to be Joseph's brother (see Eusebius, ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 3:11) may also have been the husband of Mary (cf. John 19:25), the daughter of Joseph. This relationship is asserted by Anastasius of Sinai (Bauckham 1991: 248, n. 16), and it was not uncommon for a Jewish woman to marry her paternal uncle in Second Temple times (Vermes: 69-70). If Clopas is the father of James the Lesser and Joses (cf. Mark 15:40) as well as the father of another and probably younger son, Simon (Eusebius, ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 3:11, 4:22), then he followed the same naming pattern found in Joseph's sons, with the first son named after the father (Jacob), the second after Clopas' older brother (Joseph), and the third after another male in the patriline. The name Jacob appears to be intrusive into this patriline, probably because Jacob was a younger son. In the naming of younger sons, the cognatic element of kinship structure was sometimes expressed (Hanson 1989a: 82; see table 1, above).

How did the name of Joseph's (i.e., Mary's husband's) father appear in Matthew's genealogy along with the lineage from Mary's line? I think that this is an example of the genealogical break mentioned earlier, where knowledge from personal experience--in this case the knowledge among members of the early Jerusalem church that James the Lord's Brother (James the Just, who died in 62 C.E.--see Meyer & Bauer: 420) was named for his grandfather, or the knowledge that Joseph's father was named Jacob--was (incorrectly) combined with a written record of earlier generations, which in turn was inserted in the standard Old Testament genealogy after Zerubbabel. The oral knowledge common in the early Jerusalem community would have been carried to Antioch as surely as the written record of "account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah" (Matthew 1:1) was. The writer of Matthew trusted the sources of this oral knowledge at least as much as he trusted his written list and may have simply added "Jacob" between "Matthan" and "Joseph," because he assumed that a copying error had been made on the list and the name of Joseph's father had been left out. It's interesting to note that the early Christian Ebionites, who accepted the rest of the Gospel of Matthew, did not accept its genealogy (Abel: 204).

The Name of Joseph's Father in Luke's Genealogy

Another tradition, quite different from that in Matthew, is found in the first chapters of Luke. It is usually called "L," and much of it features women (Schaberg: 276). The source for this tradition might be women (Swidler: 261-62, 271, 281) who would have had a special interest in Jesus' mother, Mary, as evidenced in Luke 1-2. I believe that the statement in Luke 3:23 that Joseph was the son of Heli (Eli) was also part of this special tradition, passed on orally by women in the early church. Rather than giving the parentage of Mary's husband Joseph (who does not appear to be a person of interest in this tradition), this statement instead gives the parentage of Mary's father Joseph. Like the oral tradition of Joseph's father that was added into the Matthean genealogy, this oral tradition from "L," about a different Joseph, was grafted onto the longer genealogy found in Luke 3.

Because it had been passed down orally for some time, there was plausibly some distortion in the original name of Joseph's father. Cognitive and social psychologists studying the transmission of oral information have found that names fare poorly in this process (Bartlett: 175; Allport & Postman: 84, 124-25; Higham; Campbell: 347-52. Often, less familiar names and terms are changed to those more familiar to the group or person receiving or transmitting the information (Higham: 51). Because of this characteristic feature of oral transmission, Hell (or Eli) may be a more familiar version of a less familiar original.

Ancient Christian tradition associates Mary's birth and childhood with Sepphoris in Galilee (Ward: 396-97). After Herod the Great's death Roman legionary forces destroyed the city and enslaved its people (Josephus, ANTIQUITIES OF THE JEWS: 17:289). There is also a Talmudic tradition (b. Sanhedrin 106a) that mentions a Mary, often thought to refer to the mother of Jesus, who was descended from seganim (a term that refers to an adjutant high priest) and played the harlot with carpenters or with a carpenter (Herford: 47-48.

Both the first century Jewish historian Josephus (ANTIQUITIES OF THE JEWS: 17:165-66) and rabbinic sources (see Miller: 63-73) mention a priest from Sepphoris late in the reign of King Herod the Great named Joseph ben Elim or Elem (Joseph son of the mute) who substituted for his relative, Matthias ben Theophilus, as High Priest on Yom Kippur. Tal Ilan, in her exhaustive compendium of Jewish names in late antiquity, has suggested that Elem may be a nickname rather than a formal name (Ilan 2002: 361, n. 3 under Elem). Nicknames were common and used extensively in Second Temple times because there was such a limited corpus of formal names and because of the prevalent patronymic naming pattern (Naveh: 113; Hachlili 2000: 86, 88, 94-96; Ilan 2002: 46, n. 6.1.1). Hachlili (2000: 105, 109, 111) notes that for a priest, nicknames derived from a disability indicated a person could not serve in the Temple. Since Joseph ben Elim did serve in the Temple, his father was the mute.

Stuart Miller (80-88) has examined the rabbinic literature that associates Joseph ben Elim with the office of segan. He traces the evolution of the term and concludes that Joseph ben Elim was an ordinary priest who happened to be the closest relative of Matthias ben Theophilus available to substitute for the High Priest on the Day of Atonement.

Given the genealogical and narrative likelihood that Mary was from a priestly family discussed above and that her father was named Joseph, the son of someone named Hell (or something that sounded like it), the ancient tradition of Mary's place of origin as Sepphoris, the Talmudic tradition of seganim often connected to Mary, and the rabbinic traditions that connect the same term to Joseph ben Elim, the latter is a good candidate for Mary's father. As a nickname, Elim or Elem would not have appeared in the formal Temple list now found in Matthew 1:13-16. The formal name of Joseph ben Elim's father was probably Matthan (Matthias Matthew 1:15-16), which was also the name of Joseph ben Elim's relative, Matthias ben Theophilus. In prominent Jewish families during this period, it was increasingly common for a personal name to appear multiple times in the same family through several generations Hachlili 1979: 53; 1984: 9, 192-94; 2000: 88).

Other fragments of early tradition may also hearken back to this connection. The Protogospel of James contains the story that Mary was raised in the Temple's Holy of Holies overseen by the High Priest. Another tradition found in Eusebius ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 2: 23, quoting the second-century writer Hegesippus, says that James the Lord's Brother was allowed into the sacred precinct of the Temple. Epiphanius (in PANARION 78, 7--see F. Williams: 605-06) says that James entered the Holy of Holies once a year like the High Priest. Each of these stories, impossible in terms of Jewish law, may retain a vestigial memory of Mary's High Priestly connection, a connection associated with the one time each year the High Priest was allowed to enter the Holy of Holies--Yom Kippur. Also, Levine (354-55) notes that even people who merely came from a High Priestly family are termed "High Priest" in Josephus and in Acts, and that former High Priests retained the use of that title.

The Lukan Genealogical List

Luke's genealogy from David to Zerubbabel and from Zerubbabel to Matthan the father of Hell is so different from Matthew's that his list must have come from a completely different source. The oldest suggestion about the genealogy, from Julius Africanus quoted in Eusebius, ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 1:7 was that the relatives of Jesus retained some oral or written record of their descent from David after the original records had been burnt by Herod.

Whatever its ultimate source, the genealogy after David and Nathan certainly exhibits a number of features of oral genealogies. There are too many names to occupy the pre- and post-exilic time periods. This is a form of embellishment. Second, many of the names in the supposedly pre-exilic segment, between Nathan and Shealtiel (i.e., Joseph, Judah, Simeon, and Levi) are those of patriarchs, which are almost never found before the exile. These names are, however, common in the post-exilic period, especially in late Second Temple times (Jeremias: 296; Johnson: 229-30). This is a form of anachronism. Third, there are in the Lukan list three blocks of names that range from very similar to near-identical and occur in the same order: (1) Matthat, Levi, Simeon, Judah, Joseph, Jonam, supposedly in pre-exilic times; (2) Mattathias, Semein, Josech, Joda, and Joanam, just after Rhesa who follows Zerubbabel; and (3) Matthat, Levi, Melchi, Jannai, and Joseph, who appear in the list just before Joseph's father. Fourth, there is the repeated occurrence of variations of the name Mattathias (five times), which serves to divide blocks of names at one end while Joanam or Jonam divides two of the blocks at the opposite end.

A remarkably similar set of features is found in the pre-Roman king list in the eleventh century work HISTORIA REGUM BRITANNIAE (HISTORY OF THE KINGS OF BRITAIN) by Geoffrey of Monmouth. Many years ago Piggott (1941) discovered that Geoffrey's list contained far more names than necessary (embellishment), that the oldest names on the list were in fact from some of the more recent Welsh ruling families (anachronism), that repetitions of blocks of identical names occurred at irregular intervals throughout one section, and that certain names divided large groups of names on the list. He concluded that Geoffrey took his list from distinct genealogies of various lengths (similar to those in Harleian Manuscript 3859) and either misunderstood these genealogies or deliberately joined them. The combining of variant pedigrees, as Henige notes (1982: 99), is a common way to transform an undesirably short genealogy into an attractively long one.

This explanation could just as easily apply to the post-David Lukan list. Given the duplication of names within families in Second Temple times discussed above, it would be hard to say whether the repeated blocks in the Lukan genealogy come from variant pedigrees combined sequentially or from the conversion of collateral lines into direct ancestors. Either would result in the over-abundance of names found in the Lukan list, an over-abundance which must have caused someone to scrap the conventional descent of Zerubbabel from the Judean kings and instead insert some of the names from this overlong list in their place. Given the difficulties Luke faced when confronted with this list, one has no difficulty in suggesting that he simply inserted "Heli" as Joseph's father, information that came from his special "L" source.

Piggott also argued that the anachronisms in Geoffrey's list occurred when a genealogy in the style A son of B son of C became confused with the style A begat B begat C. This explanation could also apply to the post-Nathan names in the Lukan genealogy and explain why what appear to be the youngest names are placed in the oldest position. This is especially true if the names were a series of simple lists without "son of" or "begat" connectors (Bauckham 1990: 328).

It has generally been acknowledged that the name of the supposed son of Zerubbabel in the Lukan list, Rhesa, is the Aramaic word for "head," and is a title for Zerubbabel, while the son of Rhesa is Joanan, the equivalent of Hananiah, the son of Zerubbabel in 1 Chronicles 3:19, 21 (Jeremias: 296; Bauckham 1990: 333). This Joanan or Jonam completes two of the three blocks of repeated names mentioned above and probably serves as a divider. The earliest block, found in the monarchial period (Joseph, Judah, Simeon, Levi, and Matthat), appears in fact to be the most recent. If this reasoning is correct and the recurring block in the Lukan list reflects, in reverse order, the pedigree of Joseph, Mary's husband, then Joseph's ancestral line would be: Jacob, Joseph, Judah, Simeon, Levi and Matthat, in that order, with Matthat being the most distant ancestor. Such a lineage would be in keeping with the prevalent Second Temple pattern of naming the first son after the father's father, if Joseph Mary's husband was the oldest son of Jacob. Joseph, Mary's husband then named his sons for his father (Jacob), his grandfather (another Joseph), his great-grandfather (Judah), and his great-great-grandfather (Simeon). His brother Clopas apparently did the same thing for his first two sons; he may have named his other son, Simon or Simeon, after himself if "Clopas" was actually a nickname (see table 3, next page).

It is evident from this discussion that Matthew and Levi were also names in the family of Joseph, Mary's husband. Simon, Judas or Judah, Matthew, Miryam, and Salome are all names of members of the Hasmonean dynasty (Hachlili 2000: 84-85, 87). Ilan (1987), quoted in Hachlili 2000: 85, even suggests that Joseph was another Hasmonean brother. In contrast, Jacob, a patriarchal name, was not common among first century BCE/CE Palestinian Jews (Hachlili 1984: tables 1-2; 2000: 85; M. H. Williams: 86). Jacob, or James, was, however, frequent among the disciples and members of the early church (M. H. Williams: 80).

Another individual who is mentioned in the Gospels and the book of Acts (Matt 10:3; Mark 2:14, 3:18; Luke 6:15; Acts 1:13), Alphaeus, had sons named Levi, James (Jacob), and possibly Judas. The similarity of these names with those in Joseph's family, and the relative uncommonness of the name Jacob, suggests that Alphaeus was, like Clopas, a kinsman of Joseph, possibly a younger brother. Alphaeus was another uncommon name in first century Palestine: Aramaic, signifying "God has replaced," such as a dead child (M. H. Williams: 94). I wonder if it might be another nickname. Levi the son of Alphaeus (Mark 2:14) is confused with another tax collector named Matthew (Matt 9:9), quite possibly because the latter was also a relative. And finally, in the last extant part of the apocryphal Gospel of Mary, Mary is defended by the disciple Levi, presumably the son of Alphaeus. This would make sense if they were relatives, the Mary of this gospel being in fact the daughter of Joseph, Mary's husband.

Summary and Conclusions

This study has examined the most recent segments of the genealogies found in Matthew and Luke in an attempt to identify their sources and determine how they came to be combined. By looking at these two dissimilar genealogies from a genealogical and oral-history point of view, we can see that a good deal more information exists in them than scholars have previously perceived. Following on what is known about genealogical sources, this study suggests that there are four independent sources in the Matthean and Lukan genealogies: the first the list of names after Zerubbabel to Matthan to Joseph found in Matthew 1:13-16, which is a list of Mary's priestly ancestors; the second the name of the father of Joseph, Mary's husband, in Matthew 1:15, 16; the third a somewhat altered name of the father of Joseph, Mary's father, found in Luke 3:23; and the fourth the post-David list of ancestors of Joseph, Mary's husband, in Luke 3:24-31.

This study finds that much of the confusion in the more recent parts of the Lukan and Matthean genealogies stems from the fact that Mary, Jesus' mother, had both a father and a husband named Joseph, and the latter also had a daughter named Mary. Joseph was the second most common male name and Miryam (Mary) the most common woman's name in Second Temple times in Palestine (Ilan, 2002: 9, 56, 57). The study then goes on to suggest a plausible reconstruction of the lineages and families of Mary and Joseph (see table 3), using ancient sources, recent scholarly work on Jewish names and naming patterns in Second Temple times, and the four sources mentioned above.

Table 1. Naming patterns for sons in the Herodian Family

          Son named        Son named for     Son named
          for father       father's father   for father's
                                             paternal
                                             grandfather

First     Antipater #2     Antipater #3      Antipater #5
known     Phasaelus #3     Herod #4
son       Joseph #3        Aristobulus #4
          Alexander #5     Herod #6
          M. J. Herod      G. J. Alex-
            Agrippa #2       ander #6
          G. J.
          Alexander
            Berenicianus

Second                     M. J. Herod
son                          Agrippa #1 *

Younger   Herod Philip     Aristobulus #2
sons      #1
          Herod Arch-
            elaus #1
          Herod Antipas
          Herod Philip
          #2
          Herod #2
          Aristobulus #5

          Son named      Son named      Son named
          for mother's   for father's   for mother's
          father         brother        brother

First     Agrippinnus    Tigranes #2
known     Agrippa #4
son

Second    Alexander #2                  Herod #3
son       Herod #5 *

Younger   Antipater #4   Phasaelus #2
sons

          Son named       Son named
          for other       for other      Other
          father's kin    mother's kin

First     G. J. Agrippa                  Phallion
known                                    Phasaelus #1
son                                      Alexander #3

Second                    Berinicanus    Herod #1
son                         ([dagger])   Tigranes #1
                                         Drusus
                                         Agrippa #3 *

Younger                   Aristobulus    Joseph #1
sons                        #1           Pheroras
                          Alexander #4   Hyrcanus *

Note. Uncertain relationship (those followed by [?] in
Houston's [1989, p. 78-81] listing were not included;
19 (45%) of the sons were named for the father or be
father's father. 23 (55%) were named for father's side,
9 (21%) for mother's side, 10 (24%) other. Roman names
were abbreviated; M. = Marcus; J. = Julius; G. = Gaius.

* Son named for both father's and mother's kin.

([dagger]) Named for the mother.

Table 2. Naming Patterns for Goliath Family Sons

Naned for the father    Named for the     Named for      Other
Naned for the father    father's father   the father's
                                          brother

Yehoezer #26            Eleazar #6        Ishmael #28    Ishmael #17
Yehoezer #28 *          Yehoezer #19                     Natanel #12
Yehoezer Akabia #23 *   Yehoezer #3                      Simon #21
Yehoezer Akabia #31 *   Yehoezer #4                      Menahem #20
                        Yehoezer #5

Note: Positive and probable identifications are included;
posible relationships are not.

Data taken from Hachlili & Smith, 1979, p. 68.

* Also named for the father's father.

Table 3. Ancestry and families of Mary and Joseph (see text).

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

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1989b. The Herodians and Mediterranean Kinship. Part II: Marriage and Divorce. BIBLICAL THEOLOGY BULLETIN 19:142-51.

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Barbara Sivertsen, M.A. (Anthropology, The University of Chicago), has written previously on local history in colonial and Revolutionary New York (THE LEGEND OF CUSHETUNK: THE NATHAN SKINNER MANUSCRIPT AND THE EARLY HISTORY OF COCHECTON, with Barbara L. Covey) and on Mohawk Indian ethno- and family history (TURTLES, WOLVES, AND BEARS: A MOHAWK FAMILY HISTORY). She is currently Managing Editor of THE JOURNAL OF GEOLOGY, 5734 S. Ellis Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60637; e-mail: [e-mail].